


Slipping Through Cracks

by canadasuperhero



Category: Band of Brothers, Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Western, Double Drabbles, Drabbles, Gen, and the like, the author apologizes in advance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 13:26:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6659860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadasuperhero/pseuds/canadasuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War Fandom alternate universe drabbles</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cattle Calls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from the practice of calling cattle when night herding. It's sort of a gentle singing-hollering to console the cattle and let them know that shadow is a man on a horse and not going to eat them.

It’s freezing once the sun sets, even in the ranch-house, and nights when patrol come across bellowing, heavy-stomached heifers have the boys (who aren’t Nixon, Perconte or Julian anyway) nearly breaking each other's legs for a chance to be warm even if just for that short time they’re forced to man up and witness the miracle of life.  
  
“Jesus Christ, Doc,” Perconte again, hanging about the edges of the barn and whining. Like Eugene has nothing better to do, what with his hands halfway up a cow’s backside trying to flip a breech calf. “That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve seen and I ride herd with Luz.”  
  
Eugene grunts in reply, staggering as the heifer lurches to the side with a bellow. He really has no idea how it is Frank Perconte is always riding herd when the cows feel the need to drop a calf. Most of the time Perconte’s a decent worker and a good man to have at your back. He’s a good saddle-man and has a real talent for marking over brands without it looking obvious but even Nixon is more willing to help during a birthing then Perconte.  
  
Hell, sometimes Nixon doesn’t even have to be bribed with a bottle of 69 first.  
  
“Frank, if you can’t see the good Doc is a mite busy right now, maybe you should shut yer mouth; obviously your own teeth are blinding you.” Bull Randleman moves easy and steady, keeping the stupid cow from lurching any further. Gene has never been more thankful for the man then at moments like these. “Go get Kitty to boil up some water, you jackass.”  
  
“Nu-uh, no way am I telling Mrs Welsh she’s gotta get out of bed to boil water!” Perconte’s still lingering in the doorway, most likely trying to soak in some of the heat of the barn without getting into range of the birthing.  
  
“Then boil the damned stuff yourself! Or better yet, go boil your fool head!” Perconte yelps as a bucket clatters against the wall by his head. He hesitates at the barn door a minute more, like he might chance Bull's improved aim if it means he can avoid trailing yard muck and noise into Kitty's slumbering house but thinks better of it, before he scoops the bucket up and makes his way back into the cold.

"Bull," Gene wheezes as Bull's momentary shift in weight leaves the heifer free to lurch again, barking Gene's shoulder against the rough wood of the stall. "If you could?"

"Sorry, Doc, wasn't thinking." Bull pulls a face, shoving and shifting the cow back towards the center of the stall. He looks genuinely worried about causing Gene any further difficulty, reaching up to rub at Gene's stinging shoulder as he passes to the other side of the stall. 

Gene can't help but smile back at him. Bull's a good man. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then the cow starts making her distress known in earnest and there's some graphic slipping and sliding of arms in cows and trying to direct Bull how to help rotate the calf with some external stimulation and the weird flirting that started happening on Gene's end has to wait. 
> 
> Somewhere else, Perconte is grumbling as he has to break the ice that skims the trough while Kitty gets to man the warm oven.
> 
> I'm really sorry about this?


	2. Space Doctors Are Grouchy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ray's mouth gets him into trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- a lot. Thank god there's always a grouchy space doctor somewhere.

There has to be something Starfleet feeds their doctors, it is the only possible answer, Ray thought deliriously as the Blueshirt man-handling his ribs growled abuse at him. Nowhere else has he encountered medics who abuse their patients as much as they heal them.

“Maybe it’s just you, you retard.”

“Doc!” Ray twisted around grinning like a loon. “Doc, look, I found a you. He’s the Oscar the Grouch of Starfleet just like you’re our Garbage-dwelling muppet.”

Ray leaned forward, ignoring the way the growly Blueshirt had to catch him and hold him upright to whisper earnestly at Bryan. “Did they feed you weird things in Starfleet academy, Doc? You can tell me where the bad-touch was.” 


	3. Sometimes Nate Regrets Ever Letting Ray Pilot His Spaceship (and that is not a euphemism)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Same universe as the last.

“Ensign Person, next time would you please refrain from making faces while the Captain of the Federation’s flag ship is on-screen?”   
  
“Oh, come on El Tee! Did you see his face? Bitch loved it when I was pretending to squish Fleet Commander Schwetje’s head. I bet you he was wishing he could have done it himself.”  
  
“He seemed much less amused when you started making obscene faces at his bridge staff.”  
  
“Pointy ears make me hot, sir.” Ray leaned over and licked a long stripe up Walt’s neck and along his ear as if to prove his point.


	4. Will Roadtrip for Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Bravo Two rolls through middle American and shit ends up going all Supernatural except Brad isn’t related to that sister-fucking whisky tango hick

*

Early Days  
  
“What the flying fuck do you mean you can’t get me the infrared monitors? I ordered that shit weeks ago, Berkley!”  
  
“Sorry, Ray.” Berkley didn’t look sorry at all, the lying liar. “Another order came in and we gave it to them.”  
  
“I’d already paid.”  
  
Berkley had the nerve to look bored in response to Ray’s scowl; if Walt hadn’t been standing behind him and discreetly gripping the back of his collar like the well-meaning douche he was, he’d have shown the fat fuck a thing or two. “Tough nuts, Person. Ferrando rubber-stamped it for someone in Technical Cognition. You know. Someone who does real science.”  
  
“The management and reclamation of ectoplasmic life-forms is a real science! It’s a laborious and intensely focused effort of multiple medical, electromagnetic, thermographic and spiritualistic study before I even get to the – you know what, fuck this noise. Who the fuck has my infrared monitors?”  
  
“Me.”  
  
The two hunters turned together; Walt’s fingers clenched on Ray’s collar, choking him. Not that Ray could blame him. Apparently the field of applied geekery was going all Nordic Death Dealer these days and it suddenly made sense why Berkley hadn’t even flinched at Ray’s, quite frankly, terrifying scowl. “Jesus Christ.”  
  
The techy shifted his monitors (Ray’s monitors! His god-damned thousand dollar monitors!) more comfortably and quirked an eyebrow. “You can just call me Brad.”  
  
“Oh, fuck no. You did not make that defunct-as-shit joke; I bet you jizz all over your Mark-8 and listen to Air Supply too don’t you.”  
  
“At least I don’t ejaculate all over the dead and rotting carcasses of people’s loved ones and pretend it’s an exorcism, you white trash fucknut.” Brad actually looked more amused then anything. Well, no, he looked sort of annoyed and constipated and a little bit like he was going to shove Ray’s face into a pond and hold him there but there was totally some amusement.  
  
Ray was totally working it. “Eh, what they don’t know wont hurt them. So then, about my monitors–”  
  
“My monitors.”  
  
“Right, our monitors.” Like he said, he was working it; Brad was a victim to the siren call of Ray-Ray. “Listen, I have the job opportunity of a lifetime for you, my gigantor Nordic friend.”  
  
  
*  
Two Years and Some Change Down The Road  
  
The curtains in the windows are moving. Brad isn’t sure why that bothers him as much as it does; just hitches his purloined service weapon more securely against his shoulder and raps his knuckles against the roof of the humvee. “Well?”  
  
Ray’s face is drawn; lips tight in an angry-looking line as he leans out of the vehicle, radio wires dangling useless between his fingers. “Yo, this thing is fucked, Brad. I’d have more luck trying to get the engine to work.”  
  
“Well then, Hunter, why don’t you scoot your whisky-tango ass under and see what you can do about that, huh?”  
  
“Fuck you, you spend enough time under there searching for the door to Narnia or whatever the fuck it is you do. Why don’t you slide your gigantor ass on down and I’ll stand guard in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas?” Despite his whining, Ray’s already tossed the wires aside and wriggled half-way under the cage of their transport with a few grunts.  
  
“I’m your ‘computer-humping asset’ remember? I don’t do piece of shit, junkyard finds that you rent with a dime-bag and some spit.”  
  
Ray mutters unintelligibly and so Brad considers it a win, returning his attention to their current locale. All the houses along the street have lawns overgrown and strangled with plants obviously creeping in from the surrounding woods. The house they’d managed to stop in front of has paint worn away to flecks around the edges leaving weathered wood that glows a dull grey in the moonlight and the curtains shift slightly, occasionally obscuring the black, gaping maw of the interior. “Trombley or Walt say what house they were poking around in?”  
  
“Yeah, man,” Ray’s voice is muffled under the noise of his own movements and the weight of metal above him. “Walt picked out a gas station back near the beginning of this charming little hell — fuck, where’s my fucking flashlight — hell-hole. He’s going to look for something useful there and Trombley’s running along in the hopes of breaking in windows like the ill-adjusted teenager we all know he is.”  
  
Brad grunts an acknowledgement and lets his gaze drift further along the street as Ray’s light flickers to life, taking in more grey-boned houses, their curtains all shifting in the breeze.  
  
The curtains in every single house are moving. Brad’s muscles jerk, tightening painfully as he snaps his head back to the first house. The window is whole and undamaged but the fabric behind the panes are still moving, much more violently now as they pull and strain against something that isn’t there.  
  
“Jesus Christ.” Ray’s voice rises with a sharp and sudden crack from beneath the humvee. He sounds confused and lost, voice a little high with it. “The lines are all shredded, Brad. Like something reached up and… clawed it’s way down the fucking vehicle as we drove over it.”  
  
Above them a faint impression of fingers press through lacy fabric against the glass before all the curtains fall horribly, suddenly still and Ray must have pulled himself out from under the victor because he just has to have the last god-damned word, even if it’s against the fucking dead.  
  
“Oh man, dibs on shooting Trombley full of rock salt if he gets his ass possessed.”  
  
  
*  
Four or Five Years For The Stockholm to Take Hold  
  
“Person! Person, you fucking retarded, sister-fucking shit-stained sack of turds where are my computers!”  
  
Walt pulled the phone away for his ear with a grimace, holding it out. “S’for you, Ray.”  
  
“Goddammit Walt, you weren’t supposed to answer that phone until Utah. He can still use his magical gigantor eye lasers to fry us from here.”  
  
“I was getting tired of hearing ‘I put a spell on you’ screeched at me every three minutes, fuckface. Besides, my voicemail can’t take this sort of pressure.”  
  
“I liked Hocus Pocus.”  
  
Ray turned to glare into the backseat, one hands flying from the wheel to point emphatically at Trombley huddled amongst Professor Colbert’s purloined equipment. “That is Screaming Jay Hawkins not some Disney-regurgitated chorus of stick-riding, carpet-licking fat chicks. Fucking philistine.”  
  
“One was skinny!”  
  
“She was fat on the inside! Like your mom.” The hunter jerked the wheel to the side vindictively, glaring as he finally swiped the phone from Walt’s hand. “This is what you get for not eating me out before you fuck off, Brad; I’m letting Trombley put his cock in your new thermographic terminal.”  
  
“That had better be a euphemism for your ass, Person.”  
  
Jesus, he didn’t want either of those images floating around in his head. Walt squeezed his eyes shut, face twisting up in distaste.  
  
“Professor Pers–” Trombley’s voice rose sharply from the back and Walt opened his eyes just in time to see something huge slam into the front of the van. As Ray jerked the wheel again, desperately trying to keep them on the road, something else plowed into the side sending them careening off the pavement and rolling into the ditch.  
  
***  
  
_“Ray?_  
  
_Ray!_  
  
_Walt?_  
  
_Come on, Ray, answer._  
  
_I’m coming, oka–”_  
  
The cellphone crunched under dark claws.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can just see Ray shooting Trombley with rock salts and claiming he saw a ghost.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes they steal cattle. Sometimes they steal rich, drunken socialites (or those socialites steal themselves).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the same universe as Chapter One.

“You boys been out Old Hyman’s way?”   
  
Luz throws elbows back and forth with Perconte in a flurry, dust rising from their clothes fit to hide a house in before the man gives up and flashes the porch a slyly innocent smile. “Not a chance of it, ma'am.”   
  
“Well then, best you do something about the brands on those cattle you seem to think the shed is hiding, George Luz or I can guarantee Hyman’s going to think otherwise.” Kitty finishes wiping her hands off on a scrap of towel, tone tart and eyebrows nearly tucked into her hairline with disbelief. “And wash up. You stink to high heavens and the only part of Perconte’s face I can make out are his teeth.”   
  
“To be fair, you could probably see Perconte’s pearly whites from Boston on the best of days.”  
  


*

 Winters watched with bemusement as a slightly mussed socialite strolled in behind Welsh and Wild Bill cheerfully announcing, “This is a kidnapping.”   
  
“I think you might find some difficulty taking the three of us alive.” Dick feels inclined to point out, smile spreading across his face as Welsh spins on his heel back towards the door and Bill puts his head down in his hands groaning.   
  
“Jesus Christ Almighty,” Muffled by moustache and palms. “I thought for sure we’d lost him.”   
  
“No, no. It’s the other way around.” Dark eyes twinkle under heavy brows (although whether this light is a byproduct of innate charm or the bottle of Vat 69 he’s saluting Dick with is anyone’s guess) as he continues, voice droll and dry. “Take me big boy, I’m yours.”


	6. Horror AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alone In The Dark was a terrible movie that gave me nightmares about toothfairies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This stands alone and does not belong with the previous supernatural Gen Kill drabble set

“What the fuck was that? No, really. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT, HOLMES.”  
  
“Ray?”  
  
“I JUST SMASHED SOME TOOTHY VERSION OF TROMBLEY’S COMBAT DUMP THROUGH YOUR WINDOW AND I’M NOT FUCKING PAYING FOR IT, EITHER.” Ray’s voice becomes muffled but no less forceful as he moves his mouth away from the speaker. “WALT, FUCK NO, DON’T TOUCH THEM. GRAB BRAD’S OTHER SKI; WE LIVE IN FUCKING CALIFORNIA, HE DOESN’T NEED THEM.”  
  
“Person, either of you touch my skis and I’m shoving them both up your ass and staking you out on the lawn as a warning to others.” Brad’s eyes flash up to check the rear-view mirror on Walt’s hick mobile before twisting the wheel sharply; rubber squeals as he makes a fairly illegal u-turn from one side of the highway to the other, the back of the truck twisting from one side to the other before he gets the whole thing under control again.   
  
Nate will just have to have himself an over-priced latte at the airport while he waits. “Now, stop screaming like a bitch and give me a sitrep, corporal.”  
  
But either Ray’s lost the phone or (more likely) he’s ignoring Brad. Instead there is the grainy sounds of fleshy impacts and Ray shit-talking with the occasional whoop of adrenaline from Walt. Underneath that is the sound of breathless, gravely whispers that Brad can’t make out.   
  
He’s straining to make them out having given up ordering Person to pick up the damn phone again when there is suddenly scrabbling at the speaker piece on Person’s side and one of those whispery voices comes in loud and clear.  
  
“Don’t worry, we’re just going to make friends, Brad. Just going to make pretty little friends.” And then the phone disconnects.  
  
Brad steps on the gas a little harder.


	7. Don't Take Notes, Reporter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That fic hinting at Ray and Brad's torrid history together, before they were married together by adult diapers (but not shit equipment. They always get shit equipment).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the start of an unfinished work. It may never be finished. But at least Poke got his racial ambiguous shot in there.

“You watch them a lot, dawg.”

Evan startles, craning his body around awkwardly before giving Sergeant Espera a nervous smile. A short distance in front of them Sgt Colbert and Corporal Person are loosely circled by Bravo and either trying to out break-dance each other or be the first to fill the others MOPP suit with milkshake. It’s all accompanied by a cacophony of screeching renditions of Barbie Girl, Air Supply and random calls of ‘get some’ interspersed with some of Brad’s choicer insults. “That’s my job and you have to admit, it’s sort of like watching a really obscene train wreck.”

He expects Poke to snort and offer some sage wisdom on the radical racial implications of the mating dance of a Jew and his Redneck before going off to needle at the both of them until they deflate. Instead Poke slides down to crouch beside him, picking at a fraying boot-cuff, sharing the view and the peace of this tiny slice of Iraqi soil. It’s a full minute of silence before Poke speaks up again.

“They weren’t always this married. It isn’t like they became best buddies in an instant; Ray is an annoying turd even on his better days.”

Evan’s hand start-stops on the way to collecting his pen - this sounds like an origins story if ever he’s heard one - but Sergeant Espera’s foot moves pointedly, casually, to settle on top of Evan’s notepad. “Ah?”

"Not every story has to be written in stone, Reporter. My people have a proud oral tradition; ain’t that enough for you?”

"Oh. Uh.” Evan laughs and he tries not to make it sound so high and nervous but Poke’s amused expression is a sure sign he’s failed. He pulls his hand back into his lap. “Off the record? As long as you don’t start this with ‘far far away’.”

Poke stares at Evan then around them pointedly and okay, yeah, they’re probably already in that point of this particular story. He holds his hands up in surrender, grinning and lets Poke get on with the story.

“The way they talk they’d have you believe that they’d never laid eyes on each other until Afghanistan. S’all bullshit of course.”


End file.
